The Golden State Killer: Podcast Recommendations
For someone who actively dislikes scary movies of all kinds, I am weirdly fascinated by true crime shows and podcasts. With the recent announcement that the case of the Golden State Killer (also knows as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker), I went back into my podcast archives and found some great podcasts for anyone who is interested in this absolutely horrifying case.
One of the most fascinating things about this case for me is that because a book called I’ll Be Gone In The Dark came out about this case recently, many of these podcasts are activly intersecting with the recent arrest making them so much more intriguing then your usual cold case. While I won’t get into it here, I will also add that the story of the book and its author, Michell McNamara, is another fascinating story that is worth reading about!
Since most people don’t have endless amounts of time to devote to listening to these stories, the following podcasts are organized by how long they will take you to get through them,
1.) Exposed: The East Area Rapist (about 80 minutes): This was a podcast produced by a local Sacramento media outlet earlier this year. It short and well produced and uses interviews and old media reports to outline the case. The crimes are mentioned, but not described in huge detail.
2.) Casefile (about 8 hours, plus 1.5 hours of extra interviews and updates): Casefile is one of my favorite true crime podcasts and their take on the East Area Rapist cases is one of their best. I really loved the balance of research and analysis with police recordings and old press conferences.
However, I will also say that this series is utterly bone-chilling and comes with all the trigger warnings. The crimes are described in detail, although the sexual assaults are not, and these events are definitely not easy listening, but the story is compelling and terrifying, and I just tore through them.
3.) Criminology (15 hours and counting): This podcast takes an entire season to look at one crime or killer. The production quality of this podcast is lower than the other two, and is mainly a conversation between the two co-hosts punctuated by audio from interviews. They are very insistent on focusing on the victims instead of the killer, which I appreciate, and have spent hours of time dissecting these crimes.If you want to know everything there is to know about these crimes, this is the one to choose.
